I'm pretty sure this was discussed on snopes.com message board and one point and the consensus was "photoshop"; someone came up with the original image that was used in the composite. I don't remember where it is.

(I don't know why it "seems to be real"; that looks like it would down the power lines and cause all kinds of disruption, not to mention being dangerous for the train -- only the perception of Japan as being crazy and anime-obsessed leads people to suspect it's real, I think.)

Yudan Taiteki wrote:I'm pretty sure this was discussed on snopes.com message board and one point and the consensus was "photoshop"; someone came up with the original image that was used in the composite. I don't remember where it is.

(I don't know why it "seems to be real"; that looks like it would down the power lines and cause all kinds of disruption, not to mention being dangerous for the train -- only the perception of Japan as being crazy and anime-obsessed leads people to suspect it's real, I think.)

Seems pretty clearly a photoshop to me. When you look at the full size version, especially around the feet, or in the multi-angle one where the legs go by the bridge etc, you can see the different lighting and shading and visual effect of the source image size difference etc.

damn.. its not the anime obsession that made me seem it was real. i guess im not as seasoned in photoshop as i thought. the way the light falls on it does make it convincing. i knew nothing about the circulation of that picture around the internet, my friend sent me that picture the other day because he knew i was going to japan on thursday.

EDIT: after looking at it more, still to me its not the lighting or "shading" that makes it seem unreal. its clearly not anchored anywhere. doesn't look structurally sound in anyway, haha.

If you look at Google Maps Street View of that very spot, and compare where the giant loli leg and foot would have to be to be in FRONT of the corner lamp post (as you can clearly see her leg overlapping the lamp at this viewing angle), you can see that her giant foot would have to be blocking the entire traffic lane to be in front of the lamp post and closer to the viewer than the lamp.

To give a sense of this scale, we can compare her left foot to the train cars on the track above, which are E231 series rail cars at 20 meters in length (around 65 feet), which are currently running on the Chūō-Sōbu Line as of February 2000.

Comparing the foot to the car on the track above, we can see that her foot is at least roughly half the length of the train car (being further from the viewer than the trains we would need to adjust a bit for perspective, so it it would actually be slightly larger than the direct line-up I've done below), putting it at around 10 meters, or ~30 feet.

foot-car-size1.jpg (56.47 KiB) Viewed 6822 times

Here is an aerial view of that exact street corner. The viewing angle in the main photo we're discussing is from up the street to the north-west, in traffic, facing the south-east.

When we compare that to the actual street view in relation to the fact that it is in FRONT of the corner lamp post, necessarily placing it in the street toward the intersection, we see that the foot would have to extend from just past the curb across all 3 lanes of traffic to the center line, which is roughly 10 meters from the curb.

The most damning evidence is comes from top picture of the 3 angle picture of the same scene.

_menina_manga_japan_metro.jpg (99.54 KiB) Viewed 6822 times

This shot shows her right leg in front of the lamp post, and we can see from the real photos of that spot from Google Street View that the lamp post should be very clearly visible exactly where her leg is, so the lamp post MUST be behind her leg in this shot. There is no other place for it, and the main view picture clearly shows that the lamp is visible and behind her leg, not inside of it. (scroll down to see the real front view, a closeup of the main fake picture showing her leg in front of the lamp, the shot of her right leg, and the real side view of that street corner)

where-is-the-lamp.jpg (132.28 KiB) Viewed 6822 times

However, when we look at the real photos from Google Street View, we see from the side view that the lamp is on the curb at the side of the road and extends over the road. So her leg would have to be even FARTHER out in the road to be completely directly in front of that lamp as the giant loli photo shows.

right-foot-placement1.jpg (39.3 KiB) Viewed 6822 times

Finally we have a rough representation of how big her foot would actually be and where it would be placed.

The pink footprint represents where her foot would have to be in the "main" picture that shows all of her, in order to be visible where it is in relation to the lamp post when viewed from the north-west, ie; between the lamp post and the viewer to the north-west (and thus overlapping part of the lamp post) as shown in the main image (pantsu.jpg) shown above.

The light green footprint shows where the footprint would have to be to cover the lamp as described a moment ago, as shown in the original shot of her right leg.

Not only do the footprints not match up in location, but they would clearly be blocking traffic, which you can see flowing in both directions at the bottom of the original image.

You could also just notice that her left leg is blurry while the buildings behind it and the cars in front of it are both in perfect focus, and immediately know that it's 'shopped. But your way is good too.

phreadom wrote:haha... yeah, you should have seen my commentary in the lounge while I was doing it.

I even said "this is getting absurd" and was laughing. But it was a lot of fun. Made my morning.

So this is what we're paying you for?

Of course not.

For the record, I showed some friends of mine what I'd been up to this morning, and one of them said: "wikipedia linking to a definition of QED is probably the most pretentious thing I've seen online ever :>"

He said that I should include the Japanese definition as well at the very least. I didn't see the big deal... I figured Japanese people would either know it from http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Q.E.D. (which is, I'm not kidding, where I first really picked up the phrase), or they could just read the English definition. But either way... here's the Japanese one: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.E.D.